VIEWPOINT / UNDERESTIMATING A BRAVE AND HONORABLE PEOPLE

By Timothy Weaver, Ph.D.

Why have we in the west responded like the ten o’clock scholar to Ukraine’s pleas for help? We are behind the reality on the ground at every turn and blind to das Grosse Bild. This is not a critique of what we are doing. However, it has been late for Kharkiv, Mariupol, Irbin, Butcha, and other Ukrainian cities barbarized by Russia, and, I should add, the cities and populations yet to come. 

It is, in effect, a critique of our hesitation and delay. I have been pondering this question along with others. For example, what we consider today (tanks and anti-ship weapons) was “escalatory” six weeks ago. After six weeks of watching the horror and bravery, the murderous thugs invading, and the heroes stopping them, why are we behind the curve?

How can that be with the world’s largest military headquarters and best intelligence under one roof at the Pentagon? Add the most sophisticated military brain trust to these assets and the most advanced military manufacturers the world has ever known. From the Rand Corporation, Syracuse Research Corporation, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Hoover Institute, Lawrence Livermore Labs, Hudson Institute, Institute for the Study of War, and MIT Lincoln Lab, MITRE Corporation, TASC, Raytheon in MA—part of Boston’s Technology Highway—come the world’s most sophisticated war planning and deadliest weapons systems ever devised by humans. We have all this yet cannot seem to get ahead of the situation in Ukraine. Why? 

Here is my take. I will sum it up in two words: gross underestimation. First, the present US government thought Russia would overrun Ukraine and complete its primary tasks of decapitating the Ukrainian government and replacing them with Russians or Russian sympathizers. So quickly did we feel this would happen that we closed our embassy and removed all personnel before Russia invaded. Some gave it mere hours and others only days. Some a matter of weeks. No one, at least publicly, gave Ukraine a chance. That scenario is constantly being updated. Ukraine has earned every weapon the west has now given in blood. 

The “planning fallacy” underestimates how long something will take. This is so common that alone it could explain how we got the situation wrong. However, not when considering that we have the most brilliant minds ever to walk the halls of MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Princeton, Berkeley, and Cal Tech now inhabiting the most prominent and most lavishly funded military think tanks on earth. The US government has access to the thinking of the Pentagon generals and intelligence experts and all of the private brains in all of the think tanks. 

Why, given all of these great minds, are we a day late and a dollar short? Because they also grossly underestimated the comedic President of Ukraine and his guts and capacity to lead in a dire crisis. We grossly underestimated the great trustworthiness, literal love of country, and unity of the Ukrainian people. Trump so underestimated Zelenskyy that he attempted to make him look like a fool who could be conned on the world stage. Trump refused ever to meet him in the White House. He tried to make him look small, ineffectual, and insignificant among world leaders. If not for some courageous Americans outing him, what Trump wanted, he may have succeeded at achieving. 

In general, I attribute the initial hesitancy of the American government to get ahead of the situation to a generally believed lie, a form of groupthink, that the Ukrainian government, including its military, was full of corrupt officials, criminals, and the whole country was less than trustworthy. This was Russian propaganda, promoted and accepted by the Trump administration and fomented and fostered during their political campaigns in 2016 and 2020. 

Remember who was appointed campaign chief in 2016 and what he accomplished at the Republican National Convention of 2016–removing a plank supporting Ukraine? If you don’t, here is a clue—what is a Manafort? Who abandoned the clear skies agreement with Russia? The Trump administration, who else indeed? This entire event was being put into motion before the invasion of Donbas, and Trump became part of the plan. Ever the useful idiot, Trump continued to side with Putin and ignore warning signs throughout his years in office. 

I cannot blame Trump, however, for the sins of his successors. I believe there was enough buy-in of Putin’s propaganda in US military and political circles when Biden took office to initially influence policy toward Ukraine—before Biden had all of his own men in place. There remained a gross underestimate of the bravery and resolve of the Ukrainians. I conclude that the current administration did not trust Ukraine to handle and use sophisticated US weaponry, especially high-tech offensive weaponry. This miscalculation has cost thousands of Ukrainian lives.

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